Zanaris Area Improvement Diary

In the first dev journal in a series looking at the revamping of Zanaris, Runescape's fairy area, the game's art director takes us through the revamp's concept phase.

Hi guys, I’m Mod Joe, RuneScape’s Art Director, and I’d like to give a rough overview of one of our graphical improvement projects. This will hopefully give you insight into how we choose projects for improvements and also take you through the different art departments that will then produce the final game assets. In this first part, I’ll talk about the concept stage. In the second part, we’ll go through modelling of game assets, such as creatures and scenery, then, in the third part, we will give you an overview of what it takes to bring things to life through the animation process.

The art team works very closely with the rest of the content developers, and when I heard that Mod Ingrid had been given the final part of the Fairy Tale trilogy to start briefing, my initial reaction was that we’ve gotta improve that area first. Zanaris itself had already undergone one graphical improvement a few years ago, but I think it’s important not to understate how much both the engine and our tools have changed since then. Many years ago, when I first started at Jagex, the art team size was only three artists (!) and we did everything (modelling, animation, mapping, etc) ourselves. Now, in 2009, we have a team of sixteen very talented artists who all specialise in one of three areas: 2D concept artwork, 3D modelling or animation. In the first part of this diary, I’d like to take you through the first stage: the concept stage...